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Updated: May 22, 2026

A Cognitive Paradigm to Investigate Interference in Working Memory by Distractions and Interruptions

A Cognitive Paradigm to Investigate Interference in Working Memory by Distractions and Interruptions

Published on: July 16, 2015

Cognitive control over working memory biases of selection.

Anastasia Kiyonaga¹, Tobias Egner, David Soto

¹Department of Psychology and Neuroscience and Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Duke University, 450 Research Drive, Levine Science Research Center, Box 90999, Durham, NC 27708, USA. anastasia.kiyonaga@duke.edu

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review

|April 25, 2012

Summary

Cognitive control allows strategic modulation of how working memory (WM) influences visual attention. However, fully inhibiting WM biases comes at a cost to memory recall.

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Psychology
Neuroscience

Background:

Working memory (WM) representations can guide visual attention.
Debate exists on whether this guidance is involuntary or strategically controlled.

Purpose of the Study:

Examine if participants can intentionally enhance or inhibit WM's influence on attention.
Investigate if cognitive control over WM biases affects memory access.

Main Methods:

Visual search task with varied probabilities of WM items matching targets or distractors.
Surprise recognition test to assess memory access.

Main Results:

Visual search was faster when WM items predicted targets, enhanced by reliable prediction.
Search was slowed by WM items predicting distractors, diminished but not abolished by reliable association.
Strategic inhibition of WM influence on attention impaired memory recognition.

Conclusions:

Attentional capture by WM contents is partly malleable by top-down cognitive control.
Cognitive control adjusts WM states to optimize search behavior.
Demonstrates a tight coupling between working memory and attention.